Computing devices, such as personal computers, laptop computers, netbook computers, and other such devices often use respective authentication mechanisms to restrict the use of such computing devices to authorized users, where those respective authentication mechanisms operate as an integrated part of an operating system (OS) of a given computing device. In certain situations, however, it may be desirable to implement alternative authentication mechanisms for authorizing computing device users to gain access to an operating system of a computing device. In such situations, OS integrated authentication mechanisms can reduce or prevent such flexibility to implement alternative authentication approaches.
For instance, as one possible example, an enterprise with a large number of computer users may wish to implement a much more secure authentication process than is provide by a given OS integrated authentication mechanism for computing devices that are used in connection with a computing network of the enterprise. In such a situation, the enterprise would need to modify the OS for each computer that is used in connection with its network in order to implement the desired authentication process. Further, if changes are made to that authentication process, each computing device of the enterprise would need to be modified in order to implement those changes. Having to make such modifications may be time consuming, complicated and expensive.